Pau Brunet – Core Post #3

As we have seen in class, separating movie stars and, by extension, television and music from their socio-economic significance is almost impossible. Stars exist because of economic production systems and political ideology mechanisms that need them. In his article "Articulating Stardom," Barry King delves into the "political economy" behind celebrities in mainstream cinema and television (167). King points out some economic areas in which stardom operates, understanding the notion of economics in this text as "a system of control that mobilizes discursive resources in order to achieve a specificable effect" (167). What I find more interesting in the text is the conflicts around naturalism and the ideas of impersonation and personification. 

Beyond ideas of genre, mainstream cinema always tries to make their stories visually believable, and the actor's role is to make a performance that supports that goal. Then, the physicality of the actor becomes the main attribute to become a type, and that type is linked to its capacity to become that character. As King says, "The predominant tendency is for the norm of impersonation to be abandoned at the level of casting in favour of a strategy of selection based on personification" (178). Once actors are selected to become characters, the impersonation begins. Something we have seen in class is how actors play around with their characteristics to become that character, such as Cary Grant or Valentino. However, last week's movie, A Streetcar Named Desire, introduces Marlon Brandon's notion of a method actor who uses impersonation to higher levels. Brandon's idea to become that character was something that, according to some rumors and notes, he was carrying outside of the filming, affecting his relationship with other actors, like Vivan Leight. Despite this particular way of seeing the performance, the method actor fails to acknowledge the privileges and conflicts behind who is chosen to be the actor selected. On many occasions, the actor has little control over their capacities to be cast for certain types, and that responds to socio-economic ideologies of what kind of bodies are able to participate in specific experiences.  

The socio-political aspect that the text points out is the idealistic and ideological representation of bodies. The standards we have seen in many movies influence the spectator's ideals of which bodies can represent specific experiences and actions. Marilyn Monroe and Marlon Brandon are bodies that easily represent particular experiences such as sex or power. Because of this, other bodies are automatically rehabilitated to do so. A good example can be A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) and Marty (1955) and the male protagonists. Brandon's body and physics are instantaneous signifiers of that sexual power and masculine presence that speaks to the story, while Ernest Borgnine goes in the opposite direction. Because of selecting actors by their types, "actors are limited to a particular kind of character for their working life" (King, 179). These assumptions are directly related to who can be a star and the terms of that stardom.